Monumental JavaScheltema, J. F. (Johann Friedrich )
History
Monumental Java
Scheltema, J. F. (Johann Friedrich )
Indonesia -- Antiquities; Java (Indonesia) -- Antiquities; Monuments -- Indonesia -- Java
The statuary of the _chandi_ Toompang has been removed, for the greater
part, to the Museum at Batavia and, possibly, one or two images, with
Professor Reinwardt’s invoice of 1820, to that of Leyden. The deities
are brilliantly executed, of idealistic design, to borrow Rouffaer’s
words, exuberant to the point of effeminacy. Some of them show the
conventional Hindu type and we can imagine the wonderful effect they
produced among the essentially Javanese scenes chiselled on the
walls. For their inscriptions Nagari characters have been used, a
circumstance adduced to prove the predominant Buddhist significance of
this temple. The principal statue seems to have been the decapitated
and otherwise damaged, eight-armed,[97] colossal Amoghapasa, Lord of
the World, reproduced by Raffles, including the head, “carried to
Malang some years ago by a Dutchman,” he informs us, which, symbolic
of unity with Padmapani, displays Amitabha, the Dhyani Buddha of the
West, the Buddha of Endless Light, in the manner of a frontal. The
goddess Mamakhi, scarcely less beautifully cut and also reproduced by
Raffles in his _History of Java_, was carried to England _in tota_ by
himself. Efforts to trace her whereabouts have not met with success;
she remains more securely hidden, probably in one of the store-rooms
of the British Museum, than the stone with inscription recording
an endowment, transported from Java to the grounds of Minto House
near Hassendean, Scotland. Talking of carrying away: a little to the
southeast of the _chandi_ Toompang stood a temple of which hardly a
stone has been left; a little to the south of the _chandi_ Singosari
another is visibly melting into air. The Chinese community at Malang, as
Dr. Brandes informed the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences, boast
of a permanent exhibition of Hindu statuary and ornament, consisting of
more than 160 numbers, gathered together in the neighbourhood and on
view in their cemetery. Baba collects Sivaïte and Buddhist antiquities
with great impartiality, subordinating religious scruples to practical
considerations, as when he lights his long-stemmed pipe at one of
the votive candles on the altars in his places of worship. Excellent
opportunities for the study of Chinese influences on Javanese art are
offered by the decoration of his temple in Malang with its motives
derived from creeping, fluttering, running, pursuing and fleeing
things: tigers, deer, dragons, bats, especially bats, shooting up and
down, flitting off, swiftly turning back, circling and scudding. The
mural paintings of a good many other _klentengs_, too, are of more
than passing interest since they promote a right understanding of the
development of the Greater Vehicle of the Law, which in Java exchanged
fancies and notions with both Chinese Buddhism and Taoïsm, discarded
the classic for the romantic, if the expression be permissible in this
connection, and still continues to live among the island’s inhabitants
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account